Metro Rhythm is pleased to announce that we will be hosting poet and story-writer Eleanor Lerman at our reading series this October.
Lerman is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Sensual World Re-Emerges (Sarabande, 2010) and Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds (2005), the latter of which received the Lenore Marshall Award from the Academy of American Poets for the year’s most outstanding book of poetry. She is also the author of The Blonde on the Train and Other Stories, published by Mayapple Press in 2009, and recently completed a novel, Janet Planet, based on the life of Carlos Castaneda.
About herself, Lerman writes:
“My first book of poetry, Armed Love, was published when I was 21. It was nominated for a National Book Award, but when it was reviewed in The New York Times, it was called “X-Rated.” You have to remember that was 30 years ago, and young women weren’t supposed to write books about sex, drugs and rock and roll, which was the subject of the poems in that volume. I spent a brief time as a minor cultural icon that year, which I was not prepared for.”
It would be another twenty-five years until Lerman was approached by Sarah Gorham, president of Sarabande Books and long-time admirer of Lerman’s work. Gorham asked if Lerman might have a book for Sarabande, and the press subsequently published The Mystery of Meteors, Lerman’s third book, in 2001.
Of Lerman’s work, Tony Hoagland states, “Eleanor Lerman’s poems have sociological savvy, philosophical rue, historical recognition, and vernacular resilience. They sing a song that is bravely gloomy, but they sing it with a fierce and earned dignity.”
Lerman is a lifelong New Yorker, and lives in Long Beach, Long Island.
You can read more about Lerman, as well as some of her poetry, at the Academy of American Poets website.
Visit Lerman’s website at http://www.eleanorlerman.com.
Read some of Lerman’s work below.
That Sure is My Little Dog
Yes, indeed, that is my house that I am carrying around
on my back like a bullet-proof shell and yes, that sure is
my little dog walking a hard road in hard boots. And
just wait until you see my girl, chomping on the chains
of fate with her mouth full of jagged steel. She’s damn
ready and so am I. What else did you expect from the
brainiacs of my generation? The survivors, the nonbelievers,
the oddball-outs with the Cuban Missile Crisis still
sizzling in our blood? Don’t tell me that you bought
our act, just because our worried parents (and believe me,
we’re nothing like them) taught us how to dress for work
and to speak as if we cared about our education. And
I guess the music fooled you: you thought we’d keep
the party going even to the edge of the abyss. Well,
too bad. It’s all yours now. Good luck on the ramparts.
What you want to watch for is when the sky shakes
itself free of kites and flies away. Have a nice day.
(from Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds)
The Sensual World Re-Emerges
You are on the subway, going uptown
This is the same train that your father rode,
the same city where your grandfather
made wigs in a windowless basement,
in a year so far gone it has faded into nothing
All day, you have been annoyed by
incidental problems and you are still
solving them in your mind as you drowse
In other words, you have gone over
You are not drowsing. You are asleep
But I don’t blame you. So am I
When you reach your stop, you change
for another train that takes you out
to the dark suburbs, where you must
walk along a dark road. Just before
you reach the lighted street that leads
to home, from within a stand of trees
the sensual world re-emerges, in all its
naked, jackal-headed beauty, holding
the moon in its outstretched hand
But you aren’t afraid: the sensual world
is an old friend. Or is it? Lately,
you have been forgetting things
and you aren’t really sure
And so it stalks away, angry not
to have been embraced, leaving you
on your own, with one foot
on the shining path and
one foot closer to the pit
Call me. I have left my number
everywhere. I want to know
how this story turns out
(from The Sensual World Re-Emerges)
“That Sure is My Little Dog.” From Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds by Eleanor Lerman, published by Sarabande Books. Copyright © 2005. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
“The Sensual World Re-Emerges.” From The Sensual World Re-Emerges by Eleanor Lerman, published by Sarabande Books. Copyright © 2010. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
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